Fairy Tale Theater VII by Howard Gayton

Monday, 28th November

Today I began by smudging the space with sage before the cast
came in, to clear the air from Friday. I talked about all the things I
had thought about over the weekend, and there was a notably better
energy in the actors, both before and after the talk. Stage management
had stuck up various quotes from individuals such as Ghandi and Goethe —
positive affirmations about life, and art!

We made good headway today, working through several scenes. It is
one of the amazing things about this way of working that you can take a
sequence of scenes that have been worked on out of order, and — with a
little linking and readjustment — suddenly find that you have actually
created a lot of the show.

In the afternoon, we did an Italian run. An Italian run, from the
Commedia dell'Arte, is quite loose, and deliberately not staged at
performance levels of energy. It allows the actors to relax and explore
the play a bit more. The cast enjoyed it immensely, and it brought up a
lot of new material. This often happens in Italian runs, because one has
the freedom to play — but it also serves the actor in getting to know
their journey through the piece.

In the afternoon they did a session on singing again, with João
Loio. He is a magician, I swear. In no time at all, they were singing
the most beautiful songs. We have one song near the start called 'Tell
us a story!,' then one in the Fish Kingdom, for the oldest sister to
sing — a lullaby, with the haunting feeling of 'saudades,' longing. At
the very end of the show there is a traditional Portuguese 'spring
celebration' song, combined with words written by Nuno and myself that
re–tell the story.

Every time we run through the scenes we have, we clean them up a
bit more, fine combing them. The actors add more life to the play as
they start to understand it, and each time little things that aren't
quite right yet are exposed. It is like writing many drafts of a
manuscript, gradually perfecting, or perhaps crafting, the piece. We are
also working through to the end of the play, gradually.

One wonderful thing that happened today was seeing the
fisherman's wife in just a simple shawl over the blacks that the actors
are all wearing. It is amazing what a great effect one can get from a
simple piece of costume, coupled with a strong dramatic image and with
actors that hold the energy of that image. One item, properly selected,
is better than a whole load of costumes that aren't right. Bertolt
Brecht talked about this: get the right prop, and that is enough. In
Commedia dell'Arte companies, the same well–made props would be used
over and over again, and most other things would be mimed!
I once was in a one–person puppet show of The Elves and the
Shoemaker. It started out with many props — and I noticed that each time
we got rid of a prop in rehearsals, the show seemed to get better.
Always start, as Peter Brook says, with an empty space.

I hope I have managed to get the costume designers to think in a
simpler way, after many over–designs. The masks and scenery are looking
good. I am a bit worried about the lighting, because the student in
charge seems to want to run before he can walk by concentrating on
'special' lights rather than on creating basic states and adding
'specials' onto this. It is more of a challenge to keep things simple
and to see what can be done within simplicity rather than to
over–complicate things — but I am sure it will be fine in the end.

Tuesday, 29th November

A lot of the cast had colds today. Rehearsals were also
disturbed, as I had to go to the theater on many occasions to see how
the lighting and scenery were doing. There is a lot less space on stage
than I had thought. I am very tired now, and it is difficult to create
in this way — but we have to, so we soldier on. It took us nearly all
afternoon to do about three minutes of the show: the change from the
birds to the seals. In part this is because we have done so many changes
that we have run out of new and interesting ways to do it, and partly
it is just that we are tired.

One thing that came up in the run this morning is the need to get
the physical performances to be really exact and clear, not soggy like
jelly. For example, there is a way of kneeling down to take a mask off
that is precise, as opposed to just bending over (always so ugly on
stage) or taking the mask off whilst walking through space. This way of
performing — creating pictures that are held for a fraction of a second
so as to imprint on the retina of the audience — is very important for
this work; it takes the performance style away from naturalism, yet it
isn't stilted. This is the language that we are using:
being direct, not needlessly wasting our energy, but following the
flow, as in Tai chi. One example of this is how to get someone down off
the back of another performer. By using a spiral, following the flow of
the energy, it looks neat, magical in fact, rather than the mess it
could so easily be.

I advised them that the best way of learning how to perform in
this way was to watch each other, and notice when someone is able to
make movements and pictures clearly, without it seeming false or
stilted. As I understand it, in many Native American cultures, they
teach by observation and example, not by explanation; and traditionally
Tai chi is learned by just copying the teacher, not with a lot of
talking and explanation. I then led some exercises to train the cast in
this approach to performance: simply moving the head, then the body,
from left to right, with clarity and precision. Then I took them through
an exercise in which they
ran around and when a drum was sounded they had to freeze in a
posture, and then speak a piece of text from the show.

In the afternoon, I put on Ravel's 'Bolero' really loud, and we
danced the warm–up. I just started dancing and gradually they figured
out that they could join me. I hadn't planned it, but it became a great
warm–up, with Nuno improvising on lights. Then he took the cast for a
run–through of the material we have so far, without words. This was
important because they still need to get the stage blocking, but if we
rehearse the piece the same way all the time, it will become tired,
boring and dry. Each time we run it in different ways, the cast
discovers new things and loosens up into the flow and the dance of it
all.

Monday, 5th December

The last few days have been very intense. We have been through
the Tower of the Tarot deck, and are starting to come out the other
side. The show is now running smoothly, and the cast are performing
well, clearly enjoying it, and giving it the energy it needs; so much so
that today we did a 'dance through,' where they went through it not
with words, but dancing to Holst – The Planets.

So what happened in the six days since Tuesday, when I last wrote?

On Wednesday, we had a very laborious workday on the Seal
Kingdom, which felt like wading through treacle. The actors in that
scene did not get the idea of image, physicality or character. I sat in a
coffee bar in the early evening in despair. What on earth could I do?
How could I get them to understand the performance style and energy? The
actress playing the boy was struggling, and was going to be away for
the first two hours of rehearsal in the evening. It was our first
nighttime rehearsal, and we needed to start on the tower scene. It was
then that I was struck with the idea that Nuno and I would create the
atmosphere of the tower in the rehearsal room with very
dim lighting and sound ('The Mystic' from The Planets Suite); and we would adopt 'high status' in how we worked with the cast.

When we returned, we set up the room with the atmosphere we
wanted while keeping the cast waiting outside. They were not to talk,
and had to accept what we did and asked of them with no discourse, no
thinking. Then we led them in. Nuno lead a warm–up that was all freaky,
frightening noises in the near pitch dark of the room. At about 10
o'clock in the evening, the cast improvised a run–through of the tower
scene with two people story–telling and the rest of them acting it out,
with someone standing in for the actress playing the boy. The nighttime
energy (very different in terms of rehearsal because one is tired)
helped blocks to dissolve in the actors' minds.

The improvisation was amazing. The actor playing the old man, the
actress playing the young girl, the stand–in actress, and the
storyteller were all absolutely astonishing. Completely immersed in
their roles, turning out to the 'audience,' and listening and playing
together. The question then became: how are we going to repeat this with
the actress playing the boy? We kept the rest of the cast in this state
of concentration, not letting them break the mood, not letting them go
out of the room. They stood in the dark, concentrated, waiting for the
other actress to arrive. When she did, we brought her into the space,
and improvised the scene again.
I noticed that she was standing with straight legs, so I told her
to bend her knees for the entire scene, in order to break her out of her
usual way of doing things. It took her the whole of the improvisation
to even begin to get the idea of what was required. As soon as we
finished, without breaking concentration, (at about midnight), we did it
again straight away. This time, she really started to get it — and
since then she has just flowered in the role! The improvisation worked, I
think, in part because the cast truly know the themes of the show, the
story, and their characters now. It set a new level for them to reach in
terms of performance.

On Thursday, we went into the theater and saw the set for the
first time. I had the cast become dogs, spraying their scent on the set
and stage. This is how dogs mark their territory, and I want them to
feel that the stage is theirs now, that it is their home. In my own
theater company, Ophaboom, we have our own wooden trestle stage that we
tour with. It is a magical space that has been with us for ten years —
it has seen rain and sun and good shows and tough shows; it is our space
and we feel really comfortable on it. So, too, the actors should feel
that here, in this big theater. The exercise clearly worked, because
they are feeling and looking very comfortable on the stage now.

In the afternoon, I decided to have them work more on their
characters, and then to 'Hot Seat' them. This is where they come into
the space as their characters, and I ask them questions that they must
reply to in character. From this exercise, we found a back–story for the
old woman. It is not in the show, but has helped the cast make sense of
the girl's imprisonment. It seems that the old woman went into the
tower when she was young and was raped by the old man, the resulting
child being the girl. And the girl is not just a damsel–in–distress,
waiting to be saved; she is intelligent and scheming, and ends up, in
our version of the story, being the one to crack the egg over the old
man. I had spoken with the actress about
the fact that we didn't want her to be passive, and she has
discovered a performance and a plot line that really conveys this. It
seems that since we went to, and through, the Tower on Wednesday night,
the students have moved on to completely new levels of performance and
understanding.

On Friday, I led a warm–up that consisted of a tour of the body,
explaining that this is the toolbox of the actor. I explained how the
body works, and what an amazing thing it is, including the skeleton, the
muscles, the heart, the breath, the voice, and then on to the rational
mind, the emotions and imagination. These are powerful tools, and ones
that the actor should hone, understand, and use wisely.

On Saturday we went into the theater, which now had all the set
and lighting fully in place. Our purpose was to make any changes that
were necessary to make the show work in that space, and to make sure the
costumes end up in the right place for the ending of the play — when
all the characters return after the spell is broken and the tower
collapses.

At the start of the day, oddly, there was a lighting tower on
stage that shouldn't have been there. Little did I know at the time just
how symbolic this would be! There were a few problems getting all the
masks from the Scenography department, which were needed for the cast to
know where to set them before and during the show. This was resolved
eventually, and the show was looking brilliant in the space, truly
magical with the masks, the white face make–up on the performers, the
images they created, and the wonderful set.

Then, the problems began. The lighting student had to leave
because he was tired. (I found out latter that my assistant had been
having a running battle with the technical crew about this throughout
the day.) Just as I was expecting to begin experimenting with lighting,
we were suddenly left with just plain white front light. Not what I
wanted at all. So I had a change of plan. First I did a warm–up with the
cast (which I needed to do as much for myself to shift some energy
leftover from the arguments about the lighting). Then the cast (minus an
actress who had to leave early) did a run of the show. They gave the
performance of their lives, as if to say: "We are so good, we don't need
lights." And this is how theater should be; shows
should be able to stand on their own without all the technical
extras. To my mind, on that night, the cast became a real company,
supporting each other, but with strong individual performances where
they were present and fully focused.

The effects of the Tower did not stop there, though, but rolled
over into a massive argument with the theater staff the next day. The
Tower, the Tower!!! The problems were eventually resolved with a
two–hour meeting with the theater manager and staff. Many of the things I
was angry about were the result of miscommunication, bad translations
between English and Portuguese, and simple misunderstanding. I need to
listen and communicate even more when I am working in a foreign country,
of course! The difference between the phrases "I am unable to do
something" and "I don't feel I have the right to do something" seems
very little, but can lead to much misunderstanding. These difficulties
have now been fully resolved, and the after–effect of the shaking Tower
is a freshness and new understanding. It has all been emotionally,
physically, and spiritually tiring, but the show is looking very, very
good. Beautiful transforming images, wonderful atmospheres, and great
performances!